Enterprises and other entities may desire access to the Internet and data communications services. Typically, access is obtained via a wired connection to a telecommunication carrier. However, in other instances, access to data services may be obtained via non-wired telecommunication operators, i.e., alternative access vendors (AAVs) that transport data traffic. An example of an AAV is the usage of a wireless telecommunication carrier to create Ethernet Virtual Circuits (EVC), which are an association of two or more service provider networks that implement a point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint connection path.
An EVC may route multiple priority levels of data traffic between a network cell and a core network of a wireless telecommunication carrier, in which each priority level of data traffic is required to conform to its corresponding service level agreement (SLA). Specifically, a SLA may specify that a particular priority level of data traffic is to meet certain throughput, availability, latency, and packet loss requirements. In order to meet such requirements, a network router serving the EVC may be mandated to fulfill certain service (QoS) parameters with respect to each priority level of data traffic. These QoS parameters may include committed information rate (CIR), committed burst size (CBS), peak information rate (PIR), and maximum burst size (MBS).
The CIR and the PIR parameters may be used by the SLA to define the guaranteed rate at which service frames of the data traffic are served by a particular queue of the network router. In particular, the CIR is the minimum guaranteed rate at which the service frames are to be served under normal conditions. The PIR is the rate at which the service frame may be served during data bursts when there is excess bandwidth and no data traffic congestion. For example, when the CIR is defined as 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) and the PIR is defined as 100 Mbps, the network router may guarantee that the service frames are served at 50 Mbps, and may allow the service frames to be served at 100 Mbps depending on available resources.
The CBS and MBS parameters may define a queue size of the particular queue in the network router. In particular, a MBS parameter may specify the maximum queue depth for the growth of the queue. The MBS parameter may govern the ability of the queue to serve bursty traffic. Accordingly, the MBS parameter may enable data traffic to burst up to the PIR, and provide for buffering when the PIR is reduced. The ability of a network router to efficiently route data traffic is highly dependent on the dimensioning of the MBS. For example, a MBS that is set too low may cause a failure of the data traffic to burst up to the PIR due to small queue size. Thus, any service frame that are unable to enter the queue may be dropped. These dropped service frames may cause transmission control protocol (TCP) synchronization problems. On the other hand, a MBS that is set too high may cause low priority service frames to become temporarily trapped in the queue of the network router. Such trapped service frames may cause data traffic transmission delays that violate a SLA.